From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:48919) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SWsWW-0001tt-1K for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 22 May 2012 13:05:33 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SWsWM-0007y4-M6 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 22 May 2012 13:05:27 -0400 Received: from mail-pb0-f45.google.com ([209.85.160.45]:50678) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SWsWM-0007xc-FN for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 22 May 2012 13:05:18 -0400 Received: by pbbro12 with SMTP id ro12so10421814pbb.4 for ; Tue, 22 May 2012 10:05:16 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4FBBC747.7040200@codemonkey.ws> Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 12:05:11 -0500 From: Anthony Liguori MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4FBBB5ED.1080408@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4FBBB5ED.1080408@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] JSON license is non-free - how are we affected? List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Eric Blake Cc: "libvir-list@redhat.com" , QEMU Developers On 05/22/2012 10:51 AM, Eric Blake wrote: > The QMP monitor uses JSON as its underlying base. However, when you > read the license of JSON [1], you will note that it has a pretty severe > limitation ("The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil"). In fact, > this limitation is severe enough that the FSF has declared that the JSON > license is non-free (even if the limitation is unenforceable), and > therefore cannot be combined with GPL code: > > [1] http://www.json.org/license.html > [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#JSON > > How do we reconcile this? Obviously, qemu must remain GPL, because it > has files that are licensed GPLv2, and the overall license is the > restrictive union of all source licenses. But that implies that we > cannot include any source code or libraries provided by json.org, if > such code is under the incompatible JSON license. > > Is the JSON license only applicable to code downloaded from json.org, > but not to the actual JSON language specification? If so, does that > mean that a clean-room implementation of JSON (the language > specification) can be written with different license than JSON (the > license), and that such alternate code could then be linked into qemu? > Is this already the case? It would be a shame to have to reinvent QMP > to use a different language specification if the entire JSON language is > deemed poisoned. Hi Eric, When evaluating JSON implementations, I looked at the json.org license and immediately sought other options. I was very aware that that clause would not be GPL compatible. Ultimately, we wrote our own from scratch based on the JSON RFC[1]. There is no dubious claims in the RFC and I don't think there could be as it's simply a strict subset of the EMCA specification. At no point have I ever looked at the json.org source but given the fact that the license is moronic, I expect the implementation to be equally dumb and wouldn't even consider it even if the license was changed at this point. [1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627 Regards, Anthony Liguori > > Thoughts? Do we need to seek legal guidance from FSF, Red Hat, or any > other organization on how to proceed? >